Written by Lars Shimabukuro, MFA Student in Design Studies and Collections and Exhibitions Prep Assistant at the Center for Design and Material Culture.
As a textile artist, I often think about the intersections of textiles and science. I love to tell people about how the copper woven core memory that was key to the Apollo mission was nicknamed by engineers at NASA “LoL” memory, an acronym for “little old lady,” in honor of the textile workers that did all the work by hand, or how the first computer programmers like Ada Lovelace were also weavers, interested in the binary code inherent in weaving drafts.
I don’t often have the opportunity to reflect on how science overlaps with other material histories, such as that of glass. As part of the Center Design for Material Culture’s exhibition Material Intelligence, the exhibition Spheres of Influence: Glass Across UW, provided this opportunity. The show detailed the history of glass at University of Wisconsin–Madison, starting in 1916 with Physics professors and graduate students blowing the glass vacuum radio tubes that developed 9XM and public radio.
At the back of Material Intelligence was the Work in Progress (WIP) Lab, a space that was activated by public workshops with different materials. This somatic addition to the show helped imprint how we learn from material, and provided access to these skills, since the equipment and instruction required to try out a new craft is often a barrier for new learners. Of course, a glass hot shop and furnaces is not the most accessible of equipment. The last workshop offered alongside the Spheres of Influence show allowed for 12 participants to design and blow our own terrariums at the UW–Madison Glass Lab, a hot shop in the Art Lofts building.
First, we chose our glass frit colors, which we then dipped our clear base form into, adding color and texture. Perhaps most surprising to me about working with hot glass is how the temperature affects the color; what will cool to be clear is a bright, glowing orange. Helen Lee, Associate Professor of Glass in the Art Department at UW–Madison, explained that this phenomenon is known as incandescence; when glass reaches a certain temperature, it expresses that energy by emitting light. The other unexpected element was how much glass wants to move! In order to shape the form, the glass must periodically be reheated in the furnace. In doing so, the glass must be gently and continuously turned like a rotisserie chicken in order not to fall out of center. This reminded me of turning ceramics on a wheel, another muscle memory that requires a lot of practice to acquire. However, the way that glass requires artists to work in tandem with each other on large pieces, or around others in a busy studio, requires a choreography that feels distinct to a hot shop.
After this day in the hot shop, we left our terrariums to cool slowly in kilns; cooling too quickly shocks the material, leading to cracks.
For the second part of the workshop the following week, we met with Hannah Francis, a graduate student from the Soil and Environmental Science department. She explained the significance of the Hellige-Truog Soil Test on view in the Spheres of Influence show. This test was developed at UW in the early 1930s by Professor Emil Truog and allowed farmers to easily test their soil’s levels of potassium and phosphorus, allowing them to know what fertilizers to add per acre to amend their soil. This was done by using colored glass, and adding color producing reagents for phosphorus and potassium so the color level could be compared to the recommended level. Hannah tested our soil, as we filled the terrariums we blew in the hot shop with layers of pebbles, activated charcoal, moss, soil, and baby plants grown in the DC Smith Greenhouse.
This experience has reiterated for me the importance of collaboration, as innovation in one area can lead to unexpected connections in another- reminding us that materials, like knowledge, are most powerful when shared.
Lars Shimabukuro (b. 1991, Honolulu, Hawai’i) is an artist whose work expands ideas of homelands, family, and memory to include the queer landscapes that raised them. They earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Art from Yale University in 2013, an Associate Degree from Haywood Community College (NC) focusing on weaving in 2019, and completed the Core Fellowship program at the Penland School of Craft in 2023. Lars has shown nationally and internationally, and teaches weaving at craft schools. He is currently pursuing a Design Studies MFA at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Human Ecology in Madison, on unceded Ho-Chunk land.